Hong Kong SAR Passport OCR API with Python

Extracting Data from Hong Kong SAR Passports

Passports issued by Hong Kong SAR follow the ICAO Doc 9303 data page layout with a two-line MRZ, and the issuing authority and place of birth appear only in the printed zone. Glare on the laminate and perspective make manual entry or plain-text OCR unreliable.

MRZ and Visual Zone in One Call

The Passport OCR API reads the MRZ and the printed visual zone and returns normalized fields, including place of birth and issuing authority where printed. Try it with the free passport scanner.

Common Integration Scenarios

• Travel onboarding: Pre-fill passport details before the traveller confirms them.
• Hotel and rental check-in: Capture guest passport data for local registration rules.
• KYC intake: Feed extracted fields into your own verification steps.

Hong Kong SAR Passport OCR API with Python

The official Python SDK reads a local file and calls /v1/passport from your backend.

Prerequisite: `pip install structocr`; set the server-side `STRUCTOCR_API_KEY` environment variable.

Prefer another stack? Open the Node.js SDK + Express integration.

import os
from structocr import StructOCR

client = StructOCR(os.environ["STRUCTOCR_API_KEY"])
result = client.scan_passport("passport.jpg")

if result.get("success"):
    data = result["data"]
    print(data.get("document_number") or data.get("passport_number"))
    print(data.get("given_names"), data.get("surname"))
else:
    print(result.get("error"))

JSON Response Example

Fictional values showing the normalized fields for a readable Hong Kong SAR passport; unavailable fields are null.

{
  "success": true,
  "data": {
    "type": "passport",
    "country_code": "CHN",
    "nationality": "CHINESE",
    "passport_number": "P0000000",
    "surname": "DOE",
    "given_names": "ALEX",
    "sex": "X",
    "date_of_birth": "1990-01-01",
    "place_of_birth": "HONG KONG",
    "date_of_issue": "2024-05-10",
    "date_of_expiry": "2034-05-09",
    "issuing_authority": "IMMIGRATION DEPARTMENT, HKSAR"
  }
}